by Eric Nylund
The damned across the chasm cheered and jeered.
“We can’t fight,” Mr. Welmann said. “No matter how strong you kids think you are, they’ll always be more of them to fight.” He nodded toward the other suspension bridge that led to the Blasted Lands. “We go that way. Fast.”
Without any argument, they raced for that bridge, their only escape.
A cluster of the working damned gathered at the bridge, all crowding to get on the thing and get away, too.
Robert sprinted ahead. He plowed into them, knocking six over with one blow, and clearing a path for him and the others to run ahead.
Eliot and Mr. Welmann jogged onto the bridge after him. Amanda was right after them. Fiona lingered, and came last.
And Eliot knew why.
As they tromped off the bridge and onto the next mesa, Fiona turned and severed the chains.
It fell into the lava.
If it was like the other bridge, though, it’d grow back. Destroying it would buy them only a minute or so.
The working damned here scattered, abandoning their rocks. Eliot jumped onto a boulder and looked around. Five bridges radiated off this plateau, connecting to others. . only now, from every direction, the angry damned came. So many, he couldn’t count them. They flowed across the land. The only thing preventing the damned from quickly overwhelming them were the bridges-they let them across only a few at a time.
If Eliot and the others didn’t get out of here, they’d have no choice: they’d have to fight and fight-and against a few hundred. . maybe even against the first thousand, they’d win.
But after an hour of battling, he and Fiona, Robert and Amanda would falter. They’d need food and water and sleep.
There was one way, though. One bridge clear for now. It led to another plateau, which in turn had a single bridge to the Plains of Ash.
“There’s a way out of lava fields,” Eliot told them, jumping down. “I can get us onto solid ground.”
Robert had his brass knuckles on one hand, held his Glock in the other. “How many are coming?” he asked.
“All of them,” Eliot replied.
“Just run,” Fiona told everyone. “There’s no time left to think this through.”
So Eliot ran. He ran before the fear could catch him and stop him cold.
But as he and the others got onto the bridge, he couldn’t stop thinking that this plan didn’t make any sense.
So what if they got onto the plains? That eliminated the danger of them falling into lava, but if they wouldn’t stop the bridges from reforming, and it wouldn’t stop the damned from pursing them. How long could they all run?
At the midpoint of the bridge, Amanda halted.
Eliot turned and grabbed her hand. “It’s okay,” he said, not at all convinced of this. “Don’t be afraid.”
But as he saw the look on Amanda’s face, he knew the word afraid didn’t apply.
At least to her.
Amanda’s lips pursed together and trembled with emotion. Her eyes still smoldered with fascination-for real. They glowed and flickered with mirage heat.
Amanda dropped his hand.
“I can stop them,” she said. “You go on.”
“What?. .” Fiona almost ran into her-and halted, seeing her burning eyes, too. She stepped around her next to Eliot.
“You have to go.” Amanda’s hands gripped either side of the chain railing. Where they touched the iron it heated. . dull red. . orange. . and then yellow and smoldering.
“I can’t hold it in much longer,” Amanda said, struggling to get her words out. “It’s this place. It’s so hot. And their anger. I can feel it all burning.”
Eliot reached out to touch her, but the heat was too great.
The heat. The fire. Eliot had seen one person with this power before. And so had Amanda.
“Perry Millhouse?” Eliot asked. “He did this to you?”
Tears welled in the corners of Amanda’s blazing eyes, but they didn’t get the chance to spill upon her cheeks; instead, they sizzled and steamed away.
Robert and Mr. Welmann came back to see what the trouble was, stopping, astonished at the sight of her.
“I can’t even tell you,” Amanda whimpered. “It hurts to even think about him. But after you saved me, everything changed. That night I had to get the heat out. I let it go. I had to. . and I burned everything-my house-my dog-my parents. . none of them survived.”
She looked away, unable to meet their horrified gazes.
Eliot felt sick, but everything made sense about Amanda now. Perry Millhouse had had something planned for her all along. Maybe he’d wanted to pass his power on to another generation, or maybe it was some revenge thing aimed at the League-but whatever his reason, the Immortal fire of Prometheus pulsed through Amanda Lane.
And when Eliot and Fiona had rescued her, taken her home, no one understood the power inside her. Uncle Henry and the others in the League of Immortals must’ve felt sorry for her and sent her to Paxington.
All those little fires on the obstacle course and when the dorms had burned over semester break: that had been Amanda.
She looked back at them, her eyes slits into a blazing furnace.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” she whispered. “And that’s okay. Whatever’s inside me, it’s never done me any good, but now, I can at least save my friends.”
Amanda inhaled sharply and winced.
“Don’t,” Robert told her. “Even if you melt the bridge, it’ll just come back.”
“You’re so noble, Robert,” she said, her voice stronger than Eliot had ever heard. “How I wish you were my hero.” She didn’t look at Robert, though, as she said this, rather her gaze firmly fixed on Eliot. “Don’t worry. I will stop them.”
The metal bars under Eliot’s feet got too hot to stand on. He took two steps back.
“There has to be another way,” Eliot told her. “Just give us some time to think.”
Her hair lifted, charged with static electricity, turning to dull red and then orange. The metal she touched heated to white and sagged. “There’s no time for me,” she said.
Amanda Lane turned and walked back they way they’d come.
Flames licked her legs and arms and spiraled about her in jets of gold and green plasma. The heat from her body was tremendous.
Eliot and the others jumped back.
The army of the damned reached the edge of the plateau and streamed onto the bridge. . pausing at the sight of her.
“Amanda!” Eliot called.
She kept walking, the air about her wavering, her footprints melting metal.
“We’ve got to move.” Mr. Welmann pointed down.
The lava in the chasm boiled and churned. Geysers showered molten rock into the air. Waves rebounded and crashed against the plateaus, crumbling their bases.
A whirlpool formed beneath Amanda, following her as she moved along the bridge; the swirling lava glowed hotter until it hissed silver vapor and blazed a blue-white too painful to look at.
Eliot had to play her something, a song to cool her spirit.
How had she managed to keep all that heat inside for an entire year? She should’ve told them.
Or had been his fault? Eliot had been so wrapped up in his own problems, that he’d never really been a friend for her.
He focused, thought about her, and started to strum his guitar.
“No way, man.” Robert grabbed him and pulled him back.
“Don’t,” Eliot growled. “I can do this.”
Fiona shook her head. “Not this time,” she told him. “Go! Before you get us all killed, you idiot.”
So he ran, half pushed along by Robert and Fiona, and he didn’t look back until he got to the other side of the bridge.
When he finally turned, he saw the damned running along the bridge toward Amanda.
They couldn’t get close. The ones in front screamed and burst into flame, floundered, and blasted back into dust. The ones in back kept pu
shing forward, though. . dooming those ahead of them.
Amanda blazed like a sun fallen to the earth.
The bridge melted and fell apart. She hovered in midair.
The lava under her erupted-plumes and gouts of molten rock and metal exploded. A tidal wave of lava surged in all directions, consuming the mesas and plateaus in its path.
Eliot turned and ran.
He no longer wondered how, or if, there was a way to save Amanda. He just ran. The encyclopedia part of his mind had nothing to say. Faced with a towering wall of pure fire, the only thing left was animal instinct.
They ran over the broken land, scrambled up dunes of ash, and crunched over a dry lakebed. . until he and the others were out of breath and his legs felt like lead. (Even dead Mr. Welmann was panting and exhausted.)
They stopped and looked.
A volcano pushed upward where Amanda had made her stand. It spewed fire and rock upon the land and hissed clouds that blackened the sky.
Nothing would get through that-dead or alive.
As Amanda had promised.
Eliot watched for a moment. Lightning flashed among the clouds, but there was no rain.
He wished he’d been there for her at school. But he’d just complained about her and treated her like a weakling. . when in fact, she had been just struggling to contain a power that, if she’d unleashed it, could have killed them all.
The words Eliot spoke not an hour ago echoed in his head: “It’s my responsibility. And my fault, if anything goes wrong.”
He’d gotten her killed.
Coming here and bringing her along had been his idea. But worse, even if he had known about her unstable power, if he’d had a choice to make between Amanda and Jezebel. . he still might have made a choice, and it would’ve been Jezebel, not her.
That made him, what?
Was he like his father? Evil?
Eliot sank to one knee. He was dizzy. . and unsure of everything.
He threw up.
Fiona came to him and set her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.
She didn’t understand. Yes, he felt guilty over Amanda’s death, but what he really felt terrible about was that along with Amanda dying, something had been burned out inside him, too.
Eliot hunched over and threw up again.
Coughing, he stood up straight. “I’m okay now,” he told them, and then pointed. “That’s the direction I saw the train tracks.”
And then, one foot in front of the other, he started moving again.
72 THE TOWER GRAVE
Eliot walked down the center of the Night Train tracks.
He had Lady Dawn slung over his shoulder, and the instrument banged along his back. For the first time since Louis had given him the instrument, he didn’t feel like lugging it around.
It was quiet here and merely hot (compared with the furnace temperatures elsewhere on the plains). Occasionally a meteor would slam into the dust and leave a crater, but they never hit the train tracks. Even whirlwinds that sprang up vanished before they crossed the tracks.
But quiet was the last thing he wanted because he kept thinking about Amanda, and how she’d died to save them, so Eliot could get the girl he really cared for.
Would he have done the same for Amanda? Or was Paxington making him selfish? Or was it his Infernal blood?
How had this all gotten so out of control?
Fiona walked next to him, and for once in her life, she had nothing to say.
That was driving him nuts, too. If she’d just yell at him-tell him how stupid his plan had been. . something. . then he could’ve defended himself.
The silence was like a knife slowly twisting in his brain.
Mr. Welmann took point, on the lookout for mobs of angry damned or onrushing trains. Robert walked on Eliot’s right side, balancing on the railroad track. He’d unbuttoned his shirt all the way, and dirty shirttails flapped about him.
They were quiet, too.
More condemnation by the lack of conversation.
It was hard to tell how long they walked. The light from the furnace-orange sun was always behind clouds, and never changed. Robert’s watch was busted. Fiona’s phone displayed jumbled characters when she’d tried calling Mitch, and she got a “caller unavailable” message.
Mr. Welmann scanned the horizon. “Uphill grade,” he told them.
Eliot nodded, not caring. It was as if this place evaporated his ability to think straight and all he could do was walk on these tracks.
There were channels and riverbeds alongside the rails now, bone dry as if there had been running water in them a million years ago. As the plains sloped up, black rocks jutted from the ash and seared red clay. There were even a few spots of lichen.
Eliot’s mind cleared a bit when he spotted stunted sagebrush. There were scrub pines, too, twisted and tortured, but alive.
As they neared the summit of this hill, a breeze carried a hint of moisture.
He got to the top, and it was as if someone had drawn a line along the ridge-splotches of moss appeared on the other side, the earth was black loam, pine forests sprouted and thickened into a jungle that blanketed the valley beyond, and a ribbon of muddy river snaked down its center. The sunlight turned from blazing orange to a cool silver overcast.
Eliot took a deep breath, and smelled a “compost” scent mixed with honey and the perfume of a million flowers.
“The Poppy Lands,” he said.
“Duh,” Fiona muttered.
Despite her sarcasm, despite the fact they’d just lost one of their team, Fiona’s eyes were wide, taking it all in and gleaming with curiosity. She’d always wanted to travel and see exotic places. This was about as exotic as you could get.
Flowers grew everywhere: fleshy orchids with inviting petals, drooping wisteria cones that dangled nectar-sticky stems, and carpets of pinhead-sized blossoms the color of cotton candy.
The train tracks continued down the slope-cutting through forest and jungle.
They followed them.
Whatever chemicals or magic protected the train tracks, it also kept the vegetation off. Still, as they entered the jungle, the trees crossed overhead and formed a tunnel.
The bugs left them alone, too. That was a good thing. There were clouds of metal wasps, giant beetles that bored into hardwood like it was Styrofoam, and butterflies that fumed acid vapor trails in the air.
“Doesn’t look like there’s a war going on here,” Robert said.
Fiona took a few pictures with her cell phone camera.
Mr. Welmann held a hand, indicating they halt. “Don’t be too sure,” he said, and pointed ahead.
The train tracks ended. Jungle blocked their way.
“Line’s been cut,” Mr. Welmann said. “That’s one of the first things you do in the war. Sever your enemy’s supply routes and communication. Get them alone. Wear them down.” He frowned.
Fiona stepped up to the jungle. “Everyone back.” She pulled out her chain and spun it over her head. She turned the whirling mass flat, and walked into the jungle where the tracks used to run.
Branches, vines, and roots sheared about her in a circular path.
Eliot and the others followed-at a respectable distance, but not too far back, because as soon as Fiona passed, tendrils wormed back and new braches extruded.
Thirty more paces like that and they emerged back onto clear tracks.
Ahead was a train station that looked like a gigantic hothouse, one that someone had taken a baseball bat to and busted every pane of glass.
Standing outside the station were six knights in mirror-polished steel plate mail embellished with gold and emerald inlay. Foot-long thorns bristled from their armor. They held weapons that looked part hunting rifle, part medieval execution ax.
Robert drew his gun. Fiona touched the chain on her wrist, but then instead pulled off a rubber band and stretched it.
The knights saw them, and they sank to one knee.
“Well,” Fiona whispered, “that’s. . different.”
“Huh,” Robert said. He lowered his gun, but didn’t holster it.
“It will be okay,” Eliot told them, and plodded ahead.
Like the Ticket Master who had bowed before Eliot on the Night Train, these guys had to have mistaken him for an Infernal Lord.
As Eliot and the others approached, the knight in front stood, and with his head still bowed, he said, “Most noble Master Post, and Miss Post, son and daughter of the Prince of Darkness, we are your honor escorts, the Knights of the Thorned Rose, Queen Sealiah’s personal guards.”62
These guys knew exactly who they were.
“Honor guard, right,” Robert said with a snort. “Why should we believe you guys?”
Fiona shot him a look for being so rude.
The knight standing turned his stilted visor to Robert, and stared at him a long moment.
“Because, sir,” that knight said, “the dismembered bodies of three hundred of the finest soldiers and knights litter the road from here to the Twelve Towers-proof enough that we have fought and bled and suffered long to clear a way so you may proceed unmolested to our Queen.”
“Do we even really need to go any farther?” Fiona asked Eliot. She turned to the knight and inquired, “Is Jezebel with you? Or close? She’s the one we want to talk with.”
“No, great Lady,” the knight said, and ducked his head apologetically. “The Duchess of the Burning Orchards is at the side of our Queen.”
Fiona sighed. “Figures.”
“A second, please?” Eliot said the knight in charge.
Eliot stepped back with the others and they huddled. “We have three options,” he whispered. “Steal a train and get out of here.”
“I’m betting the tracks are cut in both directions,” Mr. Welmann told him.
Eliot nodded in agreement. “We go ahead, but on our own.”
He gazed down the road and saw the burning remains of soldiers, twisted armor and broken lances, smoldering napalm, and torn bits of shadow slithering. . a swath of ruin and battle for miles. Here and there, however, body parts twitched and moved.
What happened to the dead in Hell when they-what was the right word for it-died? Did they slowly come back together? Or did they just lie there in pieces forever?